1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to systems and methods for analyzing prescription claim histories for physicians, and determining statistics about the prescription therapies of such physicians.
2. Related Art
Pharmaceutical sales representatives typically determine a territory call plan based on information about physicians in their respective coverage areas, and the range of pharmaceutical products that such physicians typically prescribe. This information may include the specialty of the physician, the physician's response to promotional efforts, the physician's ranking in the pharmaceutical product's market share, the physician's ranking in total market volume, and the physician's ranking in the pharmaceutical product's prescription volume. Based on observed patterns with respect to this information, further qualities about physicians have been successfully modeled such as “new product early adopter,” which refers to physician who tends to prescribe a new product soon after it becomes available, or “brand loyalist,” which refers to a physician who continues to prescribe a specific branded drug, even in the face of competitive drug availability.
While the above information is derived from prescriptions written by the physicians, the information does not provide insight into either physicians treatment practices over a given period of time, or such practices as applied to different patient types. Such targeting would require a more detailed understanding of a physician's treatment practices within his patient population, e.g., through the formation of a database of prescription activity for each physician where de-identified patients can be tracked to understand how a physician prescribes in a particular therapeutic area.
Although algorithms have been developed for use on longitudinal medical records, these applications have been for market research or summarized levels of analysis. Outcome research and market research on longitudinal prescription data is currently being offered through several vendors—all utilizing single sources of data for their applications.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for a technique which can analyze the long term prescribing practices of physicians, including the ability to provide information about changes in both dosages and products prescribed by the physicians and the ability to provide information about the tendencies of a physician's patient population to follow prescribed regimens.